Racing History Minute - November 15, 1964

This post is delayed by one day after the anniversary of a race at Champion Speedway in Brisbane, California. But hey, the race itself was twice delayed back in 1964. So I figure I'm still a bit ahead of the field.

Champion Speedway was located in northern California near San Francisco and very close to Candlestick Park, the former home of the Giants baseball and 49ers football teams.

NASCAR's Pacific Coast late model series was scheduled to make its debut at Champion on Sunday, November 1. As was the case many years with NASCAR's Grand National division, the November 1964 race at Champion was to be the opening race of the 1965 season.

The 200-lap, 100-mile race got a fair amount of coverage from the San Mateo Times newspaper.

Despite the advance planning and promotion for the race, the track simply wasn't ready for prime time. Apparently, the race was to be the first time cars raced 200 laps on the dirt track. With conditions not quite right, the race was postponed to the following Sunday.

The race was rescheduled for Sunday, November 8th. But again, the race was postponed. For the second attempt, however, rain was the issue vs. the condition of the track.

Perhaps in an effort to get the drivers to return for a third time, track promoter Jim McClennan (perhaps with a NASCAR funded subsidy) sweetened the purse pot a bit by adding an extra thousand dollars.

Two 'name' drivers who planned to enter the race were west coast racers Ron Hornaday Sr. and Bill Amick. Back in 1957, Amick won his one and only NASCAR Grand National race in Sacramento. At least records SEEM to indicate his win was scored as a GN victory - though more contemporary records note it as a Pacific Coast late model race (which later evolved into the Winston West Series and today's K&N West Series). See Tim Leeming's RHM for more info about that race.

Amick sported #9 in a font that closely resembles the font used by Richard Petty Motorsports on its Fords raced by Marcos Ambrose and Sam Hornish Jr.

The date of the race was re-set a third time to Sunday, November 15th. Bill France Sr. came to town to watch the race as well. I would surmise Big Bill wasn't pleased with the two delays. He may have flown in to lecture McLennan and/or Mother Nature.

Even with the two extra weeks of preparation, the track still wasn't quite ready for the heavy cars and 200 laps of racing. But race on they did. Hornaday won the pole and managed his car, traffic and track conditions to score a relatively easy win.

The track conditions were brutal to the field. Only six cars remained on the track at the end of the race. Amick gave Hornaday a good race until several laps past halfway. But after breaking a ball joint, he was done for the day at lap 137.

With Amick's exit, Hornday put his car in the wind and set sail for the remaining 60 or so laps. He easily won by 8 laps over 2nd place finisher Marvin Porter. Coincidentally, Porter would return to Champion about six months later to win the second and final Pacific Coast race at the track on May 2, 1965.

6th place Scotty Cain was the driver the promoters brought in to "liven" things up

Ha. Interesting. Good trivia. Never heard of Cain. But found this article about his reputation on NSSN.

http://www.nationalspeedsportnews.com/racing-history/west-coast-cain-had-a-versatile-racing-repertoire/

Scotty Cain was a tough, hard-nosed driver and a larger-than-life character. His aggressive driving style earned him the nickname The Pecks Bad Boy of Auto Racing and he wasnt afraid to mix it up during his 25-year career.

Racing out of Venice, Calif., Cain came up through jalopy racing, winning at Carrell Speedway, Huntington Beach, Culver City and Veterans Stadium in Long Beach.

Cain was another versatile driver of the era, hopping between track roadsters, stock cars and jalopies while dabbling in midgets. He raced jalopies when their races were televised weekly on Los Angeles stations, first from Culver City and then from Gardena Stadium, the broadcasts reaching a wide area of the southwestern United States.

Cain won at least a couple of CRA feature races and was leading the 500-mile sprint-car race on the Riverside Intl Raceway road course in 1958 when he hit the turn-six wall and lost a wheel off of his Buick-powered Kurtis Indy roadster. Afterward, he concentrated on stock cars, always in Ford products. In July 1958, he raced up Pikes Peak, drove in a USAC stock-car race on the mile at Milwaukee and an ARCA race at Toledo, Ohio.

The main reason Cain is not better known is that he confined most of his racing to the West Coast. In addition to the 1958 foray, he only made two NASCAR starts outside of the West on the beach at Daytona in 1957 and a race at the Charlotte (N.C.) fairgrounds in late 1959 that ended with his T-Bird on fire.

Cain won 11 times on NASCARs Western circuit, with five of those coming in his first championship season of 1967. In 1968, a tight point battle with Ray Elder went down to the final race at Saugus (Calif.) Speedway. Elder needed to finish one position ahead of Cain, and was doing so when forced to pit to change a right-rear tire with just 14 laps to go. Cain went on to finish third, winning his second-consecutive title this one by just two points. At age 48, Cain still ranks as one of the oldest champions in NASCAR touring series history.

Cain competed in NASCARs Western series three more years before retiring as a driver following the 1971 season. He retired to the city hed raced out of for several years Fresno, Calif. where he owned a bar. Scotty Cain passed away on Dec. 2, 1994. Reportedly, he discovered he had cancer after being injured while breaking up a fight at his bar, at age 74. To quote the late Jack McCoy, the career victories leader in NASCARs Western series, All of us in the sport loved the volatile and funny Cain. He was a uniquely colorful guy. Cain was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2002.

Found a couple of pages re: Scotty Cain from the book City of Speed by Joe Scalzo. Text may not be for tender eyes, but I had to laugh as I read the prose.

On Bill Amick's win: from 1954-1961, NASCAR scheduled 2-10 or so races per year that counted for both NASCAR Grand National (GN) and Pacific Grand National points (PCGN). Winners of these races got credit for both a GN and a PCGN victory. Drivers who are credited with PCGN wins (or, vice versa, GN wins) in this manner are: Tim Flock, Herb Thomas, Dick Rathmann, Lloyd Dane, Eddie Pagan, Eddie Gray, Hershel McGriff, Parnelli Jones, Darel Dieringer, Dan Gurney, Bill Amick, Danny Letner, Jim Cook, Marvin Panch, Danny Graves, John Rostek, Royce Hagerty, John Kieper, Art Watts, Fireball Roberts, and John Soares, Sr. In addition, NASCAR did this with the Short Track Division, where drivers who won in one got credit for both, which is how Jim Reed has 11 PCGN wins.

From 1963-1997, the only combo races were at Riverside, College Station, Sonoma, Phoenix and Ontario, with 1994 Brickyard 400 also oddly being a one-off that counted.. Here, the overall winner got both a GN and a PCGN win. PCGN drivers got win points for being best amongst themselves, but they only got a career win if they won overall. Interestingly, during this time Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, and even Darel Dieringer ran the Riverside races as PCGN drivers (including his first GN win in 1963), getting credit for series wins in the process.

There were also combo races with ARCA in the 1990s, but overall NASCAR shifted do much of the monetary and media bias to the east. You'll get more details sometime in early to mid-December.

http://hometracks.nascar.com/records/NKNPSW_Career_Victories

Great research, Chase. Good to see your west coast lure snag a good tip from Scott.

Link to a little more Champion history:

http://dcrrbook.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-brief-look-at-old-champion-speedway.html